I'm a financial journalist and author with experience as a lawyer, speaker and entrepreneur. As a senior editor at Forbes, I have covered the broad range of topics that affect boomers as they approach retirement age. That means everything from financial strategies and investment scams to working and living better as we get older. My most recent book is Estate Planning Smarts -- a guide for baby boomers and their parents. If you have story ideas or tips, please e-mail me at: deborah [at] estateplanningsmarts [dot] com. You can also follow me on Twitter

Marshall Plympton is the proprietor of an eclectic American restaurant that garnered 47 reviews on Yelp, 12 on Google and 13 on TripAdvisor. Most of these reviews are positive. But Plympton (not his real name) responds to even the slightest online criticism with outrage.

“If any other bleepholes [he used stronger language] like Jjhamie319 are thinking of coming to my restaurant, listen up: Please DON’T come,” he wrote on Yelp, responding to a very mild critique. “I have enough work serving the rest of you people without this kind of grief.”

Plympton clearly doesn’t understand that technology and social media have empowered customers. Like it or not, they can give us their feedback both privately and in a public forum. They expect companies will be easy to contact, respect their comments and reply thoughtfully.

Providing the kind of customer service that will generate loyalty and profits in our high-tech world isn’t fundamentally different than it was a decade ago, but it’s faster and more transparent. When companies foul up, customers are unforgiving, word spreads virally and the consequences are magnified.

It would be much better if customers turned to social media to voice their approval–for example by re-tweeting your Twitter messages (that’s “RT” in Twitterspeak) and encouraging others to follow you on Twitter with the special Friday tweet #FF (which stands for “Follow Friday”).

Here are five ways to offer high-tech service that keeps customers coming back and sending their friends.

1. Invite their comments. Customers have round-the-clock access to the social airwaves. So make sure that their first impulse is to reach you directly–day or night. You can do this by offering “chime in” forms; direct chat links when your FAQs haven’t answered their questions; and an easy way to reply directly to every corporate e-mail you send.

Outbursts on social media tend to occur when customers are left stewing because they can’t reach a company immediately. It’s important to avoid these public battles: Once a customer publicly stakes her ground as a frustrated opponent of your company, it will be hard to ever get her–or her friends–on the path to company loyalty.

If you make yourself easy to reach around the clock, you let customers know you value their business, input, and loyalty. Customers won’t need to write negative comments on Twitter or on their blogs if they can use e-mail, the phone, or a feedback form on your website and know that it will be answered—immediately and with empathy.

2.Shoulder their burdens. Companies that are thriving today realize that they can take on what were once considered customer responsibilities. This is why your bank now tells you when your mortgage payment is due, your pharmacy reminds you that it’s time to refill your prescription to avoid running low on medication, and your credit card issuer alerts you that your bill is looming.

Customers also expect you to shield them from their own mistakes. One company that’s doing that well is Amazon.com. For example, if you try to purchase a title for your Kindle, you might get a prompt reminding you that you already bought that e-book two years ago; you can’t accidentally pay for it again.

3. Offer self-service. Customers have come to appreciate–and sometimes demand–self-service because it offers them round-the-clock convenience, a level of autonomy and the ability to apply intimate knowledge of their own problems to the task. In their minds, no live customer service representative, no matter how empathic, can match that.

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I read this just ot find out what RT and FF mean but before l did I looked both abreviations up on Google. There are many interpretations on Google but non of them seem to fit. After reading the article I was no better off. What the heck are you talking about?

Thanks for letting me know and apologies for the confusion. I added this explanatory paragraph to the article:

It would be much better if customers turned to social media to voice their approval–for example by re-tweeting your Twitter messages (that’s “RT” in Twitterspeak) and encouraging others to follow you on Twitter with the special Friday tweet #FF (which stands for “Follow Friday”).

Riffing on “Technology-driven examples include Gmail, which warns you that you’re sending out an e-mail that lacks an attachment, when you’ve typed in the body of the e-mail, “attached is.”…

I would love to see a follow up piece on managing customer support in a super-personal way with technology driven solutions. I manage product, marketing and traditional support and for a site with many, many, many PASSIONATE users and we work hard to provide personal support but it can be challenging…

Customer service is not and should not only be enclosed within the four walls of the office or a restaurant. It should be practiced everywhere. Being accessible is one customer service that should be given priority.

I like how you pointed out that we should welcome complaints. I agree with this. There is no perfect company and knowing our flaws is one way to improve our business.